Welcome back all you Supergirl fans! President Boxleitner is back to grace our screens and while he may not be as wonderful as President Lynda Carter, I always get a kick out of seeing him on the screen.
What? He’s only in the episode for, like, a minute? Well that’s just a shame. At least we get to see David Harewood aga– Oh. No. It’s CGI Martian Manhunter. . .
Dang.
As always, spoilers ahead.
1. If I Had a Child
It’s been a hot minute since we’ve seen this plotline, eh? Alex hasn’t mentioned her desire to adopt in months, perhaps all season. I think part of that comes down to her being single again but when it came back up this week, I was left wondering. . .why now? Why here, in the third to last episode of the season, is this coming back? At least one small bit was because I had forgotten she filled out an adoption form at the end of last season and the rest was because it felt, well, forced.
It was out of the blue and seemingly the furthest thing from her mind. However, they framed it well and, considering the year she’s had, of course it’d be the furthest thing from her mind. What really gets me is that the writers obviously needed a reason to get Alex away from the DEO and to give Kelly something to do, so that the romance that’s on the horizon is more earned. This is especially evident by the fact that the whole thing wrapped up in this one episode, with Alex not getting the baby.
I ship it, I just wish they’d develop Kelly a bit more and give her something more to do than be around James or Alex. It wasn’t so bad before but this episode really brought into relief just how little they’ve done to establish her. Why did she accompany Alex? How was she able to do that with her job? She feels out of place, like the writers have this character they know has to be around for something later on but have no idea what to do with her until then.
We get some good backstory development near the end of the episode, which is a welcome addition, however, up until then, there was woefully little outside of being a stand-in for Kara so that she could be off with Lena this week, which is a waste of the character.
2. Where Have All the Kaznian’s Gone?
When it came time for Kara & Lena to give ol’ Lex a visit in Kaznia, it was pretty apparent that we, the audience, would learn very little about his plan, mostly because we already were given a step-by-step walkthrough of it a few episodes ago. The only reveals we were given was the identity of the mole and Lex’s experimentation on aliens, which was hinted at previously but not explicitly addressed (I believe.) However, the writers used this ironic distance to pretty good effect, allowing us to focus more on the character’s reactions to certain discoveries and they employed it very well when it came time for Kara to find Kaznian Supergirl’s sad room of photos and concrete sadness. Kara’s horror at that discovery and it setting the stage for her almost revealing her identity to Lena was the highlight of the night.
In fact, while I am furious that the show did the “hero is about to reveal big secret but backs out because of some contrived, on-the-nose dialog indicating the secret would be devastating in an “ironic” way” because you know, you know exactly how this is going to play out. Lex is gonna reveal Supergirl’s identity to Lena before she has the opportunity to say anything, Lena will feel betrayed and hate Kara, and she’ll probably say something like “You betrayed me. How dare you keep this a secret.” and then run away before Kara can defend herself. Or Kara will try and say something like “You don’t understand” or “I tried to tell you” or something else unhelpful and Lena won’t have any of it and dammit, I’ve just made myself angry.
OK. Okay. Hopefully the writers handle this better than that. Kara’s decision not to say anything makes sense and her resolution to tell Lena, come hell or high water, once Lex is gone, is based on solid reasoning, which alleviates the frustration this could have brought about. There’s only two more episodes to make it through avoiding this. Let’s hope they can do it.
Continued below3. Solidarity Forever
Much as how last week was Nia’s time to shine, this week we focus on Brainy and his attempts to hold up and stand up to Lockwood at the DEO. It’s a particularly important story, showing the dangers and importance of speaking out against immoral orders and about the difficulties of holding those in power to account. We need to strive to be better, to speak up when it is difficult, to be stronger. It is easy to sit and say nothing against those who wish to utilize power structures to disenfranchise and persecute those who the system already has bias against.
What, I think, works well about this plot was that Brainy wasn’t able to convince Lockwood or his enablers to desist but he was able to get everyone else to. And it took three additional, outside people standing up to Lockwood to take him down. It underscores the difficulties with which it takes to take down a product of the system which enables him and, while they won the battle, as must be the case with a network show, the fight still goes on.
4. The Eve Dodger Rag
Despite the title featuring Eve prominently, there is still that feeling that she’s be horribly underutilized this entire season. Perhaps that was the point, to have her be a semi-background character until the big betrayal, but then again, Supergirl has never been very good at handling its side characters. We get some flavors of Eve this week, as she fights Lena and Kara at the Kaznian base, now with the powers of Copy. It was rather conspicuous how they only talked about his file but you know, that was the perfect refresher of his powers so I can’t fault it to much.
I can, however, fault her motivations being, essentially, I love Lex. Give us more insight into her head Supergirl! We know she’s crazy smart but when you throw in Lex, it opens up a whole can of worms that were obviously not thought through.
I really liked the fight between Eve & Lena. It was quick and well choreographed, plus we got to see Lena’s high heel knife in action. It’s good that Lena is being given something more to do now as opposed to earlier in the season. I still wish it wasn’t all in relation to Lex but, at this point, what are we to do?
5. Which Side Are You On?
I still think this was an exponentially stupid plot point, the killing of Lockwood’s wife, but I’m glad they didn’t go the opposite direction for the kid. Namely, that it didn’t push him towards his father’s awful crusade and instead onto the path of kindness. It is a step in the right direction for him, although we know even less about his personality than we do Kelly, and he’s been here since the start of the season.
I don’t have much to say about this one, as I have to see how it plays out to really comment on it. Will the show indulge in the son being 100% redeemed right away for his choices? Or will they handle it with complexity, showing how much growth the kid has to do to move out of the shadow of his father’s hatred as well as to challenge the smaller, harder to see biases and begin to move towards being better? Probably the former since there’s only two episodes left but I can hope.
Although I don’t really care much about the character as I’d much rather have more Agent Vasquez, who hasn’t been seen since season 3. I miss DEO agents mattering and being more than extras. It really is a great detriment to the series.
That about does it for now! Did I miss something (like President Clone?) Did anyone else think that shot of Lockwood in the fire was really out of place and made him look like the Hulk? Let me know in the comments and I will see you again next week for the penultimate episode where. . .something, something war and Lockwood with pupil-less eyes. Until then, stay super y’all.
Best Line of the Night:
Nia: “So, hammer time?”
James: “Not in the face, kiddo.”
